SOMALIA’S PRESIDENT EXTENDS HIS TERM
In a highly contentious move, Somalia’s president has extended his own term in office by two years, drawing condemnation from the United States and other allies who viewed the move as a naked power grab and feared it could upend faltering efforts to establish a functioning state and defeat the insurgency by the extremist group al-Shabab.
President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a onetime U.S. citizen, announced that he signed the law extending his mandate early Wednesday, two days after it was approved by a majority of Somalia’s Parliament amid accusations that the president’s office had engineered the vote.
The United States, which has given billions of dollars in aid to Somalia and conducted numerous airstrikes and military raids against al-Shabab, had privately threatened Mohamed and his top officials with sanctions and visa restrictions if he disregarded the election time table.
Critics say Mohamed appears to be taking his cues from the autocratic president of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, who has become a close ally in recent months.
Mohamed said the twoyear extension will allow him to introduce a one-person, one-vote system — a longheld dream of Western donors eager to show progress for decades of engagement in Somalia. But critics say that Mohamed is now using the one-person, one-vote goal as an excuse to delay elections that he risks losing, and that he is taking his cues from Afwerki.